Saturday, October 5, 2013

Facebook linked to declining social well-being

A new study involving social media’s effect on mental health as correlated Facebook to an overall decline in life satisfaction. The study, created by the University of Michigan, had college students fill out a questionnaire about their overall life contentment, then over the course of two weeks, had these same students respond to five daily text messages asking them about their current mood.

The study found that, after using Facebook, students had a decline in overall well-being. The researchers decided to see if there was a relation with any form of social interaction, so the students were asked the text questions again after having a face-to-face social interaction. The findings were that the students actually felt an increase in well-being, thus confirming their findings.


This has yet to be proven as a causal claim though and is only based off of the correlation.

1 comment:

  1. It’s crazy how Facebook and social media platforms in general actually have the power to adversely affect our lives. We’ve always seen Facebook as a wonderful way to connect and find friends. However, in my computer-mediated communication foundations class, we studied how online relationships can lead to an increase in loneliness and a decrease in actual companionship.

    Facebook for example, leads the industry in “connecting” people. However, it actually increases loneliness and takes away from people’s ability to communicate in real face to face settings. The entire experience is mediated and lacks spontaneity, which I find necessary in human interaction. In my eyes, relationships and true camaraderie cannot be attained on the superficial social media platforms that we are so used to. We need to log out of our Facebook pages and log back into our real lives.

    Also, this article may interest you: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/05/is-facebook-making-us-lonely/308930/

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